Published 4:00 am, Saturday, February 18, 2006

Scientific studies into the safety of turning a Nevada mountain into the nation's final resting place for deadly nuclear waste must be done over again to ensure the project's credibility, following charges that a few scientists with the project faked their data.

Repeating the research will probably cost several million dollars, U.S. Department of Energy officials said Friday.

Investigations of the alleged scientific fraud began last year, with the revelation of internal e-mails -- written from 1998 to 2004 -- that implied scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey had fabricated or distorted their data regarding the safety of permanently burying nuclear waste and spent fuel from nuclear power plants under Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas. The fraud charges are being investigated by the Energy Department's inspector general and by congressional investigators.

The announcement that the scientific work must be repeated was made at the same time that Energy Department officials released a 144-page report concluding that the basic science behind the waste repository remains sound.

Even so, "we need to move forward based on work that meets our quality standards," said Paul Golan, acting director of the department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "And if that means redeveloping this work, taking the time and incurring the cost to do that, we just need to do that."

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The announcements were ridiculed Friday by Nevada officials, who have fought successfully for a quarter-century in court and in Congress to prevent the opening of the Yucca Mountain waste repository. They argue that the waste site would be environmentally risky and would hurt business, real estate and tourism in Nevada.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., chairman of a congressional subcommittee that is investigating the case, also criticized the announcements in light of the fraud allegations.

"Today's report should come as a surprise to no one, as it's been proven time and time again that the Department of Energy will do anything and everything to justify the Yucca Mountain Project," he said in a statement. "Based on these flaws, considering any part of the Project's justification as 'sound science' is absurd and an affront to Nevadans."

Friday's 144-page Energy Department report did not deal with the fraud allegations in detail. However, the report reprints copies of the private e-mails among the scientists. Some of the e-mails seemed to mock the officials for whom the researchers were supposedly preparing objective scientific analyses.

"Wait till they figure out that nothing I've provided them is QA," a reference to "quality assurance" or safety of the facility, one scientist said in an e-mail dated Oct. 29, 1998. That e-mail, whose author isn't identified, hints that the scientist was disgruntled because the Energy Department wasn't paying enough money for the research: "If they really want the stuff, they'll have to pay to do it right."

Another e-mail, dated Dec. 18, 1998, hints that one of the scientists suspected far in advance that trouble was ahead: Yucca Mountain Project "is looking for the fall guys, and we are high on the list. ... Who got how much funding at what time will all be long forgotten when the lawyers start challenging credibility of (the) results."

A persistent scientific dispute has concerned whether groundwater would penetrate the repository fast enough to risk carrying the highly radioactive, too-hot-to-touch waste and spent fuel into groundwater reserves beyond Yucca Mountain, which is near the California border.

The U.S. nuclear industry has long viewed construction of the site as vital if the nuclear power industry is to have a major, cost-efficient future. Otherwise, utilities that run nuclear plants must continue storing the waste at reactor sites across the nation -- at enormous, profit-draining cost -- because of security and safety concerns.

In recent weeks, Bush administration officials indicated they might try to turn Yucca Mountain into a nuclear dump site for much of the world, not just the United States. Critics say there's no way the mountain could safely hold global nuclear waste without forcing the opening of another waste site somewhere else.